Rwanda 1994: 100 Days of Blood and Tears

We have all by now witnessed far too many examples in the world of man's inhumanity to man. Few however can compare to the genocide that took place in Rwanda in the spring of 1994 in terms of sheer numbers and the speed with which it took place.
It began as a dispute among two groups in Rwanda, The Hutu's and the Tutsi's. The Tutsi minority was considered the aristocracy and they dominated the Hutu majority for decades. In 1962 the Hutu's came into power and reversed these roles. In response to this over 200,000 Tutsi's fled to some of the neighboring countries and over time formed a guerilla army called the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
In 1990 This group invaded Rwanda and forced then Hutu president Juvenal Habyalimana to sign a power sharing agreement. On April 6 1994 he was killed when the small plane he was flying in was shot down while he was returning to Rwanda from a peace meeting. This event opened up the floodgates. Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi's as well as some Hutu moderates and began to attack them. The killings were indiscriminate and spread from the capitol to the countryside. In Rwanda all individuals carry identification cards which specify their ethnic background. These "Tribal Cards" are how people were identified and singled out. Hutu's were also broadcasting hate propaganda over the radio to encourage the continuation of the killings. Some of the worst mass murders took place in churches where people had gone to seek refuge. In some cases victims were forced to kill their own family members before they themselves were killed. Most of the victims were killed either with machetes or beaten to death with clubs or sticks.
It ended in July 1994 after Tutsi rebels united to form a group and invaded Rwanda from some of the neighboring countries and managed to put down the Hutu's. By the end of the genocide it is estimated that there were between 800,000 and 1,000,000 dead. Countless thousands more had been raped, tortured, and beaten. Rwanda's population at the time was about 7,000,000 people. About 1/7 th of the nation had been slaughtered in the space of only three months.